Diplomacy
by speaks
Summary: Diplomacy is tricky. But is it trickier between planets or people?


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* * *

 **Diplomacy**

* * *

"That was the fanciest bathroom I've ever thrown up in."

When Lance heard Hunk say that right behind him he choked into his drink, almost spewing some out his nose before he got control of his laughter. As he did so he wheeled around to face Hunk, who looked rather concerned about Lance's health for someone who not five minutes before had come over with this nauseated look and sprinted away mid-conversation to go empty his stomach of the edible alien intoxicant he'd been consuming since the festivities began.

"What?" Hunk defended. "It was. There were _cushions_ _on the walls, Lance._ Seriously, have you been in that bathroom yet? There was a violinist playing in the corner! Or, you know, a space-violin… -ist. It was some kind of wooden string instrument. I'm too drunk for this."

"Uh-huh. You good now though?" Lance checked, giving Hunk a scrutinous once-over just to make sure.

Before Hunk could answer, Allura descended on them with a flourish and twirl, fanning them with a gust of air as the soft petal-like folds of her sapphire dress twirled along with her. "There you are, Hunk!" she gushed. "They're starting up the next dance in a tick or two and I seem to have lost my partner to the buffet. Would you—"

"Gladly," Hunk grinned, and waved merrily to Lance as Allura dragged him back out onto the dance floor that Lance and Hunk had just barely escaped from not ten dobashes prior to Hunk's fancy bathroom field trip.

Together they disappeared into the crowd as the band launched into a fresh song from the hanging stage set far above the vaulted marble hall. The sound of strings and brass filtered down from above through the green moonbeams that shone through the stained glass windows near the ceiling, through the hanging strings of light that dithered atmospherically, swaying just behind the beat of the music like jellyfish tendrils a hundred feet long. Lance swayed a bit too as he followed one with his eyes all the way up to the intricate stucco ceiling—a historical painting he couldn't possibly hope to understand from one day's exposure to the culture, no matter how _long_ the day had felt. He had to focus to stop swaying, once he'd started. He was tired.

They'd been awake for almost twenty-four hours and had defeated an entire fleet of Galra in the time between then and now, saved a planet, set up a diplomatic relationship between the Coalition and said planet, and had been dancing and drinking and generally buttering up their newest allies ever since, for over three vargas now and counting. So Lance was capital "T" Tired.

But...

But the music was to die for, Lance had a diplomatic relationship to nurture, and the people of Malira had made it abundantly clear that this party was a _vital_ step to their integration into the Coalition. So he slammed the rest of his drink and went to find some important Malirian to dance it up with.

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Near a long table covered in golden lace and lined with obscure and rare delicacies, Coran was networking.

Every time someone came to the table for food he would greet them and launch into casual conversation, gauging the reception of this diplomatic deal with everyone from the servers carrying trays to the Minister of Defense. Before Coran and Allura were put into cryostasis, Malira had been a planet of extreme seclusion. They did not readily make friends, and when they did, their expectations were grandiose and demanding. He _distinctly_ remembered Alfor being forced to attend a three day party which only ended when he quite literally fell asleep on his dancing partner. So he'd been hoping that the Malirians had, as the paladins would put it, _'chilled out'_ since then.

But the longer he stood by the table, the more he realized they had not chilled out one bit.

"The Red Paladin does not seem too interested in diplomacy," one Malirian said to him without preamble as the band segued into a much slower melody (a waltz in ¾). He was rather short and bulky for such a tall and spindly race, with sunken eyebrows and even more sunken eyes. He wore a dozen medals on his formal uniform, all of which oozed importance.

"Ah," Coran said. "You mean Keith." He'd been wondering if—scratch that— _when_ this issue would come up.

His eyes raked over the hall, looking for the paladin in question. But he saw Hunk and Allura first, who had each been stealing the show all night, Allura with her flashy dress, Hunk with his sun-yellow formal coat, and their unstoppable energy. Together they made such a lively dance-pair that the other dancers around them had cleared a wide circle and paused to watch. As Coran looked Hunk threw Allura high into the air and caught her again by the forearm and thigh, throwing their combined weight into a calculated spin that had the circle cheering.

Not too far away from them were Pidge and Matt, who'd been dancing together on and off for the entire night so far. Coran had been surprised by that—he'd thought Matt would have been all over the pretty Malirians, the way Lance had been at all the celebrations they'd attended for the first few years of their travels. And he was. But invariably he would end up back with Pidge again, for whom who Allura had pulled a forest green coat from her old childhood clothes. As Pidge stopped dancing to clutch at her stomach and laugh (a raucous sound that carried even over the music and crowd), punching her brother playfully in the shoulder, Coran couldn't help but smile fondly.

Lance danced by the pair of siblings a moment later with an older Malirian—the captain of the treasury.

Even after all this time Coran still half-expected to see Lance wearing blue, so he almost missed Lance as he and the treasurer went waltzing past the two cackling Holts. Coran felt a twinkle of pride as he watched Lance smooth talking the treasurer. He himself had been trying to corner the man all night with no success. After all, the Malirians had a vast supply of wealth at their disposal, and if they shared even the tiniest fraction of it with the Coalition, together they could arm a hundred more planets against the Galra. So the Malirian Lance was dancing with was arguably the most important in the room. Leave it to Lance to befriend the man instantly.

Black was a good color on that boy.

As Coran looked Lance waved at someone across the room, shooting them a tipsy, lopsided grin. _Gotcha_. Sure enough, when Coran followed the direction of Lance's gaze he found Keith leaning against the far wall, arms crossed over his crimson formal coat, looking like perhaps he wanted to phase right through the wall and exit through the other side. Oh, Keith. Perhaps Coran should have been a little more clear about the importance of playing along with Malirian customs?

"Yes," the Malirian in front of Coran grumbled, in answer to Coran's rhetorical statement. "Keith. Perhaps no one told _Keith_ how horrifically rude it is to stand idle at a celebration for the commencement of new friendship?"

"I'm sorry, I don't believe we've been introduced," Coran interjected as happily as he could manage, hoping to steer this man as far from Keith as possible. "Coran. Advisor to the Princess and chairman on the council for the Coalition."

The man accepted his hand and shook it gruffly. "Rel," he deadpanned. "Director of Interplanetary Relations."

"...Ah," Coran said again, even more deflatedly than the first time, and Rel was already marching away toward Keith before Coran had time to recover.

Oh dear.

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"Oh boy," Matt giggled. "Pidge, look. I think someone's about to try and ask Keith to dance again."

Pidge almost tripped over Matt's leg as she tried to get a look at the impending disaster. Sure enough, there was a Malirian marching toward Keith with distinct purpose where he stood leaning against a galaxy-patterned tapestry. "How many are we at now?"

"I think this is number twenty-six," Matt decided after a moment of thought. "You'd think the word would've spread by now."

"Who are we gossiping about?"

Matt and Pidge looked behind them in tandem to see Lance fixing the collar of his black coat and raising his eyebrow at them amusedly. "Keith," they said in tandem, and Pidge added, "he's about to reject another dance invitation. Wanna watch?"

Lance pouted, turning away with a toss of his hair. "I think I got enough rejection myself earlier, thanks."

Pidge immediately rolled her eyes. "Oh shut up," she needled fondly. "Don't be a baby, you _know_ Keith doesn't like dancing, or parties, or any of this stuff."

The pout eased up, just a smidge. "Yeah I know," he sighed. "I just—"

A shout rang out through the ballroom then, bringing the band to a grinding stop and stealing the rest of Lance's words from his mouth. All eyes fell on Keith and Rel, who were now poised as though they were two seconds away from throwing hands.

As the hall fell quiet, Rel seemed to realize they'd come under a spotlight and used it to his advantage, turning away from Keith to face the room at large and raising his voice even more. "I thought Voltron wanted us to join their Coalition," he said, his booming voice echoing all the way up to the highest point of the domed ceiling and back again. "They come on their hands and knees and ask us to join them, to help them, to _fund_ them, and yet." He turned back to Keith, who was defiantly standing in the exact same position, arms still folded over his chest, but was now glaring at Rel like he was a loud mosquito. Rel gestured at him with disgust. "And yet they can't even be bothered to respect our culture and traditions. Why should we join them when one of their own thinks he's too good for us? He refuses to dance with us—he even refused to dance with his own _leader_."

That was a considered _huge_ slap in the face on this planet. Lance knew that much. Murmurings of shock and outrage disrupted the deathly silence that had befallen the crowded hall, and Lance felt eyes on him from every direction, so he fought against the angry blush blooming on his face and neck.

"That's right," Rel said, emboldened by the crowd's reaction. "How are we to trust them when they don't even trust their own—" Rel's eyes went wide as Keith seized him by the collar in one smooth motion, hauling him backward to slam his back up against the wall where Keith had so recently been leaning.

Without a thought Lance launched into action, pushing between Matt and Pidge to break up the fight before it got nasty. He was close enough that he heard Keith hiss, _"How's that for a dance?"_

But it turned out Lance wouldn't have to break anything up, because Keith immediately released the man after that and made a beeline for the exit. The crowd parted for him like an opposing magnetic force, and Keith didn't spare anyone a glance as he left, not even Lance, who shouted his name twice before turning his glare on Rel. So much for _'interplanetary relations.'_ While he'd gotten a 'dick' vibe from this guy during the diplomacy meeting, he hadn't been quite prepared for dickishness of this magnitude.

"Control your paladin," Rel barked at him as Lance converged on the spot where they'd been fighting. A wave of hatred washed over Lance so suddenly that he actually bared his teeth at the guy, which resulted in a _very_ satisfying waver of Rel's overconfidence.

"Why don't _you_ control your temper instead?" Lance suggested as a healthy alternative. He was well aware that the whole hall was still watching them and listening, and that he was supposed to be on his absolute best behavior right now for the sake of the universe, and that Shiro would have had something very wise and composed to say if he was still here and he was still in charge, but somehow, Lance just couldn't bring himself to care about any of that. Lance wasn't Shiro, and Lance was _pissed_.

"How dare you?" Rel hissed. "We give you food and hospitality—"

"And we saved you from invasion," Lance barked back.

A hand landed softly on his arm then, and he dimly registered Allura's presence. "Lance," she warned quietly, but Lance pulled his arm from her grasp.

"No," he said. "No. Look, we've played along with your traditions all quiznacking night. We've danced your dances and we've eaten your food and we've listened to your music and we've _saved your people._ We have respected you. The absolute least you could do is respect us back. _My paladin_ ," he seethed, echoing Rel's annoyingly one-dimensional view of their team, "does not thrive in social environments. Neither does the Green Paladin, actually," he pointed out, gesturing at Pidge, who groaned loudly and waved at the curious room of Malirians before shrinking behind her brother. "You know why that doesn't matter? Because Team Voltron is a _team_ above all else, and where some of us are weak the others are there to strengthen the cracks. Keith doesn't dance because it's not his _job_ to, okay? His job, as a paladin of Voltron, is to defend jerks like you from the Galra. And now it's _my_ job, as his _partner_ ," Lance emphasized, almost spitting on each consonant now, "to follow him out in solidarity."

The crowd broke into hushed murmurs again when Lance followed through on his word and set off toward the balcony door that Keith had exited through, which hadn't quite closed all the way. A bit of starry sky still peeked into the hall.

As Lance yanked the balcony door open and then slammed it shut again behind him, Allura hit Rel with an extremely unimpressed look.

At least he had the grace to look ashamed.

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There were two moons that orbited Malira, but they were so small that their gravities had never pulled them into the lovely round shape that Earth's moon was blessed with. Instead they lurked in the sky like two battered lumps, silver-green and hazy and ominous against the blood-gold Taflaron Nebula, which filled the entire night sky. It was like being caught in the vastest spiderweb.

The balcony was empty of anything but a few potted flowers and a marble rail. No Keith. Had he seriously wanted to escape the party so badly that he'd jumped from the third story? Lance rested a hand on the rail as he looked to the ground below. Who was he kidding, this was _Keith_. Of course he'd found a way down.

Sure enough, there he was on the ground floor below, only a dozen yards away. From there he'd descended about halfway down the ivory steps of the palace before taking a seat and resting his elbows on his knees as he stared out across the sprawling neon metropolis, the heart of the capital city. Peering over the side, Lance spied a length of vines trailing down from the balcony over the steps below. Bingo. He could hear the door opening behind him now, but he didn't wait around to let anyone try and convince him to return to the party. Throwing one leg over the rail, he started the long climb down.

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Keith heard Lance the second he started to climb down, but didn't acknowledge him until he was plopping himself down on the steps beside him.

"You shouldn't have followed me."

Lance snorted beside him, and Keith didn't have to turn to know what face he was making. It was that haughty, offended look he donned whenever Keith said something Lance believed to be utterly absurd.

"I'm serious," Keith insisted, still opting to keep his eyes on the horizon rather than facing Lance. The palace sat in the foothills of an enormous mountain, and the capital city stretched out to the horizon in every direction below, a gleaming technological wonderland that reminded Keith a little of Tokyo, or maybe New York. This place was like Times Square stretched out into an entire city. The lights were so glaring that the criss-crossing streets hurt to look at for too long, and yet he'd found that he couldn't look away. "We need these people to like us," he sighed, "and I already fucked it up by sitting out. There can't be two of us sitting out or they'll never—"

"Keith," Lance interrupted, and Keith was so annoyed at being cut off that he finally looked over. The annoyance immediately evaporated at the look on Lance's face. "There are a lot of good reasons I could give for me to be out here right now, with you," Lance began with practically. "I could say I'm out here as a show of solidarity. I mean, we can't have our allies thinking our team dynamic is anything less that a hundred percent, right? Or I could say I'm out here because I'm pissed off and I don't think I can be in the same room as that guy right now without decking him. I could also say I'm out here as the Substitute Black Paladin to give you some big rousing monologue to reaffirm your place on this team. It wouldn't be as rousing as Shiro's obviously, but to be fair… _no one's_ as rousing as _Shiro_."

A little puff of laughter escaped Keith, then, and Lance gave him a small grin in return to acknowledge the terrible joke. It fucking _hurt_ to think about Shiro, but somehow Lance made it hurt a tiny bit less. He didn't understand how Lance managed that. It was like magic.

"I _could_ say those things," Lance went on after the beat of silence, more softly this time. "I could, but... yeah, no, I'd be lying. I know I should probably be out here for the sake of the bigger picture, as a leader or a whatever, since this is all so serious and important. But the truth is, I'm just out here 'cause I care about you, man."

And just like that, the stars switched places with the stairs.

"Oh," Keith said. Oh-so-eloquently.

As if he could sense Keith's sudden vertigo, Lance reached across the few inches of space between them, threading their fingers together loosely and blinking at Keith in earnest all the while. "So...are you okay?" he added quietly when it was clear Keith didn't have any actual words to follow that up with. "Talk to me."

Keith shied away from the intensity in Lance's eyes. It was still sort of new, this thing between them, and Keith could only handle so much of it at once. Being alone with Lance felt like being strapped to a rocket and aimed at the sun. "I'm sorry," he mumbled after a long moment of deliberation.

Lance's grip on his hand tightened. "For what?" he scoffed. "I would've slammed that guy against the wall too if I were you. He deserved it. They should promote him to Director of Interplanetary Assholes."

"No," Keith said. "Not that." Of course he wasn't sorry for that—he'd do it again in a heartbeat.

"For what, then?" Lance wondered, with genuine confusion coloring his voice. "Not wanting to dance? Keith, just because this particular society puts some kind of weird social importance on parties and dancing doesn't mean you should be obligated to do it if you're not comfortable with it. That's not fair to you. It's completely ridiculous actually, and I for one—"

"No," Keith pressed, " _no_ , Lance, I'm…" But he trailed off and groaned as the words fell to pieces in his mouth. They felt so small and petty in the shadow of things like the war and the alliance and the universe, so much so that he could barely bring himself to say them. But Lance was still waiting, so he dragged them out of his chest. "I'm not sorry for refusing to dance," he mumbled. "I'm just sorry for refusing to dance with you."

There was the blush creeping onto his cheeks now. Right on schedule. It would probably be years before Keith felt comfortable enough in these waters not to turn pink at the slightest pull of the current.

"Keith," Lance complained after a moment of silence, and it sounded like he was torn between quite a few different emotions. His voice was strained. "That's… You know I'm not _really_ mad about that, right? Yeah, I did wanna dance with you—I still do—but I'd never guilt you into doing something you didn't want to do. I mean, there's probably gonna be something you want to do with me at some point in the future that I don't wanna do. You wouldn't force me into doing anything, right?"

The pinched feeling that had been plaguing Keith's chest since he left the palace eased up a bit as he chewed on that. "No," he admitted. "I guess not."

"Exactly," Lance grinned triumphantly, and leaned back with a smug wink, as if he'd just won some kind of game. It was the same expression he'd worn for two straight weeks following their first kiss, when Lance had snuck into the Marmora base by himself to explain about the Shiro clone and demand Keith's return to the team. The expression was a pretty good summary of what a relationship with Lance was like in general, actually. "What are you smirking about?" Lance huffed a little defensively.

"Just… thinking," Keith said fondly, and turned Lance's hand over to thread their fingers more firmly together.

It was satisfying to know he could make Lance as flustered as Lance made him. "O-oh yeah? About what?"

In love or not, Keith wasn't about to admit that he was swimming in some pretty damn sappy thoughts. So he glanced over his shoulder, looking for a distraction. Sure enough, there were two people standing on the balcony above them from whence they'd descended, immediately recognizable despite the hour. Allura's hair shone silver-green in the moonlight, and when she saw Keith looking she paused in whatever she was saying and gave him a tentative wave. Next to her unapologetic radiance, the Director of Interplanetary Relations looked like he was drawn by an angry child with a broken crayon.

Lance made a _hmph_ noise as he followed Keith's gaze and saw Rel. But Keith wasn't really angry at the guy anymore. He'd really only been worried that he'd fucked things up with Lance, to be honest, which was… "Does it ever feel weird?" he wondered aloud as Lance gave a two-fingered salute to Allura with his free hand. "Sometimes fighting a war, and then sometimes just…"

He trailed off, unsure how to finish. A warm breeze sent his hair into a brief frenzy, tickling his neck on the inside of his collar, partially obscuring Lance from view.

"What?" Lance prompted, and released Keith's hand to push his hair from his face, looking half-amused and half-nervous about it.

Keith didn't really know how to express what he wanted to say. How strange it felt to face death every day, yet feel more fear at the touch of someone's skin. To spend the day building an alliance between a planet of eleven billion people and a league of similar civilizations, yet to feel more stressed over a relationship between two of those people. Just two. Hundreds of billions of lives rested in the palm of their hands every day, and yet Keith and Lance had stepped away from it all. For what? Because they wanted each other? Was it _selfish_ to want this? Was it selfish to take it?

The more lost Keith got in his own head, the softer Lance's expression became, until he was grinning a sideways grin and running his thumb over Keith's cheekbone. "Keith," he intoned, eyes locked on Keith's the way they did when Lance was about to say something extremely wise or profound or intimate. " _Everything_ is weird."

Keith couldn't help it; the shock of the sentiment was so at odds with what he was expecting that he burst out laughing. It didn't offend Lance, however. It egged him on, and had him laughing too. Soon they were gripping each other just to stay upright, giving in to it with wild abandon until their stomachs ached from the workout.

"That, right there, is some wisdom for the ages," Keith announced through his laughter. "The real Shiro has got some _big_ shoes to fill when he comes back."

"I want it as my senior yearbook quote when we get back to Earth," Lance agreed. " _'Everything is weird.'_ Lance McClain, Savior of the Universe, Honorary Garrison Graduate of 2042."

Lance was so full of himself but Keith was so amused that for once he indulged it, and one-upped him. "Fine, then I'll get it tattooed it on my body."

"Ooo, where?"

"You know where," Keith deadpanned, and Lance (who'd only just got control over his laughter) busted up laughing all over again as he sprinted with the implication straight to 'ass' because he was Lance and how could he possibly have taken it any other way.

"Oh my god. Why is this so fucking funny?" Lance cackled. " _Promise_ me you'll put that shit on my tombstone when I die. Like in serious calligraphy and everything so everyone thinks it's deep. _Please, Keith_."

And as Lance went on cackling, Keith's giggling petered out. Keith knew that was a joke, but still, Lance's words cut sharply through the moment. For a brief instant he'd completely forgotten about everything else. About the dancing, about the fight, about the Malirians, about the war, about the fact that they were on a planet 19 million light years from Earth, about the fact that every day they faced the possibility of death, about the fact that every moment spent like this was both a chance to fight for justice wasted and precious time squandered on selfish desires—desires that meant nothing next to their task as Paladins of Voltron. As Lance's last joke still refused to settle in Keith's stomach, he closed his eyes. The sudden swell of restlessness and anxiety needed to be addressed before it grew into a tidal wave, so he took a deep breath, focusing as Shiro taught him to on the pace of his breathing and the beat of his heart.

He allowed the wave to crash on the shore of his mind. He watched as it splashed up the shore, and when it had gone as far as it could go, he exhaled, and imagined the wave of anxiety returning back to the sea.

The way _Lance_ had taught him to.

Somehow, even at the mercy of the colossal workings of an absurd and unknowable universe, Lance and Keith had found each other. They stormed enemy bases together and talked about their days like they'd gone to work at an office afterward. They attended award ceremonies and laughed about what people were wearing while kings read speeches. They'd given each other more emergency first-aid than Keith could even remember and yet they still hadn't managed not to blush when they kissed, even though they'd been doing it for almost a whole phoeb now. They were in a weird relationship in an even weirder world, and it was the weirdest fucking thing. Lance was right. Everything _was_ weird.

"What?" Lance blurted, and only then did Keith realize he'd been staring for awhile, and that Lance had grown incredibly flustered in the meantime.

"N-nothing," Keith blurted right back. "I just—" Oh, fuck it. He was tired of dancing around it out of fear. "I love you."

Lance's jaw dropped. "I— _Wow._ Okay, wow, that's..? Oh my god? I love you too? So much, Keith, and I've wanted to say it for _so long_ you don't even _know_." At this point he seized Keith by the face with both hands and kissed him full on the mouth.

His heart surged with happiness and embarrassment in equal parts. "Lance, Allura and Rel are out here still."

"Don't care," he hummed into the kiss.

And when Lance's hand slid to the backside of his neck and his warm lips parted open, Keith decided he didn't care much either.

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 _[Ten minutes ago...]_

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The moment Lance slammed the balcony door behind him, Allura hit Rel with the most disparaging and disapproving look in her arsenal. He managed to look ashamed of himself about his behavior, but it wasn't enough for Allura. She was going to finish the job Lance had so wisely started.

"You have a lot to learn about teamwork," Allura said haughtily, not loudly enough for anyone other than Rel to hear. This was for him and him alone. Rel looked like he wanted to argue, but Lance's speech must have really done a number on him, because he opted to shut his mouth again without saying anything. "Follow me," Allura told him, and promptly set off for the balcony.

Rel was helpless to do anything but obey.

When Allura pushed open the door and stepped into the warm evening air, Lance was disappearing over the edge of the railing. That was fine. Perfect, actually.

"Relationships," she began, "are a two-way street. Humans are a very complex species, and are the perfect example for relationships between intelligent beings. Their interpersonal relationships are more multifaceted than almost any other species I've encountered during my lifetime. Take Lance and Keith, for example."

By this point they'd reached the ledge, and Allura gestured to the steps far below, where Lance was currently jogging toward Keith where he sat about halfway down.

"When they first met, they did not get along. Their differences were stark and glaring, and they fought bitterly at every turn. They were more polarized than any two people I'd ever met before, and I cannot lie, in the beginning I sometimes I doubted that they would ever become friends or that they would even last as teammates. But, somewhere along the way…"

She smiled as she heard a sharp intake of breath on her left, responding to the sight of Lance taking Keith's hand down below.

"I…" Rel leaned his round elbows on the railing, looking exhausted and guilty and uncertain. "I had heard rumors," he finally decided on saying, "that the two paladins were partnered beyond the battlefield. I'll admit I didn't think it was anything more than gossip."

"That is a good way to describe it," Allura smiled. Partnered beyond the battlefield—she'd have to share that with them later. She _adored_ embarrassing them. "The most important thing is that Lance and Keith remain polarized in a way that should make love impossible. And yet, amazingly, it doesn't. Instead, their differences strengthen them. Not only does their relationship work, but it also works actively to make them both better people."

Rel sighed. "I understand what you are telling me, Princess."

Allura wanted to say it anyway, outright, so there would be no question. She would not stand for a repeat of this incident.

"The Alliance works together much the same way that Lance and Keith do," she said, pulling herself up to full height in order to look down her nose at Malira's Director of Interplanetary Relations. "We all have strengths and weaknesses in this universe, and it is of utmost importance that we recognize each in each other, and use our strengths to cover each other's weaknesses. If your planet is to join the Alliance, you will have to compromise. We must _all_ compromise for what is right."

At this point she glanced back to Keith and Lance, just in time to see Lance grab Keith by the face and kiss him silly. Rel flushed and turned away, back toward the door that led into the ballroom.

"You're right, of course. Us Malirians are not a very compromising people," he admitted, adjusting the collar on his formal coat with an embarrassed little huff. "But…"

He cast one last glance over the edge of the balcony toward the two humans below. Between one moment and the next they had stood, and one was now leading the other by the hand, away down the steps toward the dark road and the city lights beyond. It was impossible to tell which was which in the dark.

"...but, perhaps we can learn."

And with that, he and Allura left the balcony to return to the festivities.

No one was left to hear the echo of human laughter carry upward from below, or to watch the two humans as they led each other out of the dark and into the glaring light. No one saw as the two silhouettes paused at the road's edge and became—for one fleeting, blissful moment in the sea of space and time—one.

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my tumblr is speakswords, feel free to ambush me there if you ever have anything to say


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